I Am The Third Wave Feminism Analysis

“I am the Third Wave,” Rebecca Walker declared in an article for Ms. in 1992 and, thus, coined the term and introduced the idea of third wave feminism (41). In her article, she addresses the devaluation and mistreatment of women and stated her definition of feminism:

To be a feminist is to integrate an ideology of equality and female empowerment into the very fiber of my life. It is to search for personal clarity in the midst of systemic destruction, to join in sisterhood with women when often we are divided, to understand power structures with the intention of challenging them. (41)

Literature on third wave feminism is related to feminist literary criticism which is concerned with the inequality of women and the representation of women in literature (Barry 121-22). Feminist literary criticism follows the three waves of feminism: The first wave of

Furthermore, the second wave of feminism, which arose in the 1960s and 1970s, was concerned with social issues, such as, employment and payment, reproductive rights, and sexual harassment (Kroløkke and Sørensen 7-9). In addition, the second wave of feminism was related to movements that advocated the rights of other oppressed groups, for instance, blacks or homosexuals (ibid.). In their book Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake define third wave feminism as “a movement that contains elements of second wave critique of beauty culture, sexual abuse, and power